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Which bothers you more in a book, excessive swearing or excessive misspelled words and bad grammar?(or perhaps neither)

Which bothers you more in a book, excessive swearing or excessive misspelled words and bad grammar?(or perhaps neither)

Jana #questionnaire

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82 Answers

Alex

Excessive padding.

4
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Douglas

excessive misspelled words and bad grammar.

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Ariannah

All of the above, plus overly long and explicit sex / violence scenes. Does it really add to the story to devote 3 pages to how she responded when he nibbled her clavicle? But if one feels it necessary, write using good grammar, spelling, and remember the names of your own characters 🙂

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Kelsie

Writing structure is key. It’s far too obvious nowadays who has talent and who lets an editor slap their stories together.

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Fay

Bad spelling and grammar

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Maartje

Bad spelling and grammar

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Sarah

The latter, for sure. I don’t mind swearing in moderation, if it makes sense in the story. Too much can be off-putting, but not nearly so much as misspelled words and bad grammar.

2
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Sonia

Poor grammar and spelling. It pulls me right out of the story and all I see are words. Wrong words. I have trouble getting past it.

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Siri

Excessive filler

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Writ

Misspelled words and bad grammar surely. My brain can’t move past the mistakes. I get stuck on that.

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Megan

The spelling and grammar. I mean, I can live with it (book I’m reading at the moment has the odd error but I’m still very into the story) but it sticks out like a sore thumb :/

2
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Stephanie

Poor spelling, bad grammar & graphic sex scenes or ones that last too long. I personally don’t like reading sex scenes at all & appreciate it when the author leaves most of it to my own imagination.

1
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Vicki

Excessive everything! Get on with the story! Or I’ll just skip ahead.

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Debra

Grammar and spelling!

1
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Candace

Misspelling and poor grammar get me every time!!!

1
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Rachel

Excessive editorial mistakes. It makes it hard to concentrate on what I am reading if I have to become a makeshift proofreader in order to read it

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Amanda

Misspelled words. I feel like the editor AND the word programs should’ve fixed this. How could it had gotten so far to printing with misspelled words?

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Bethany

Misspelling and grammar. Swearing I can deal with.

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Joanne

Misspelled words and poor grammar. Books should be proof-read before being published!

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Sandy

Swearing

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Rosa

Excessive misspelled words and bad grammar

4
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Ann

Depends if the poor spelling and nonstandard grammar are representations of dialect or just poor editing. The latter is intensely irritating and I will not read a book to its conclusion if the writer or publisher didn’t want to pay for a decent editor.

1
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Donna

Spelling mistakes, grammar and editing mistakes drive me crazy

1
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Sandrine

Misspelled words and bad grammar. And yes, I correct them!

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Beverly

The latter.

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Kate

Grammar and basic spelling

1
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Tonya

Excessive misspelled words

1
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Tonya

0
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Imogen

Excessive Misspelled Words & Bad Grammar

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Ashley

Spelling & Grammer!! The cursing you can read pass … but not miss spelled words ?

3
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Sue

Bad spelling and grammar every time!

4
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Elsa

Poor grammar and bad spelling

4
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Michelle

Giving a main character a difficult name to pronounce or read. It trips up my flow of reading and starts to irritate me.

2
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Ricky

Bad spelling or grammar. It means that someone is making money doing a terrible editing job, and I could be making that money while being better at it.

3
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Paula

Bad spelling and grammar drives me insane.

1
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Fay

Spelling matters

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Deborah

Poor proof reading and grammatical errors.

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Alisa

Editing errors. Swearing doesn’t bother me whatsoever lol

1
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Harriet

I’ve gotten so used to people swearing all the time that it just doesn’t bother me any more. But I do hate excessive spelling errors and poor grammar in a book I’m reading. I always want to cross out the errors and correct it, but with the Kindle I just can’t do that.

2
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Lynn

Swearing is annoying, then grammar.

0
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Ashley

Misspelled words and bad grammar also bad storylines and plots and bad writing. It all sets my teeth on edge. It’s so annoying. I can’t read the rest

1
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Ashley

I guess swearing if it’s like every other word but a little here and there I don’t mind but it has to be used properly

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Joanne

Book, internet, anywhere, I hate misspelling and bad grammar! Damn it!

3
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Elise

Swearing doesn’t bother me — I’m much more likely to stop reading a poorly written/edited book. What really stops me from reading a book is what I think of as “violence porn” — violence that’s so over the top that it seems intended to arouse prurient interest.

4
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Gail

grammar & misspelled words bother me more.

2
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Jenn

Both

1
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Megan

I won’t read a book with bad grammar or misspelled words. It ruins the book for me. Swearing is necessary for character development, so that doesn’t bother me at all.

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Montana

I love swearing but grammer gets to me

1
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Sara

Grammar!! And spelling. Swearing doesn’t bother me.

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Tammy

Grammar, unless the swearing is poorly done, but then it still falls under grammar.

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Jay

It’s the spelling that usually strikes me first then the grammar. Happens quite a lot on Amazon where authors can self-publish. It can actually ruin a good book for me, sadly

1
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Mary

Punctuation, spelling, poor grammar, lousy formatting. I cannot tolerate reading any book where these are badly done.

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Gemma

Misspelled words and grammar

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Grace

While I’m not a fan of swearing in general, I’d rather that than just plain bad editing. It comes off lazy–like you just wrote it once and submitted it for printing without even one other person looking over it for those kinds of things? Really? As a writer, I can’t imagine that! One or two typos is not a big deal, but when it’s constant, that is a huge turn-off for me.

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Helen

I was sent a book to read as a beta reader. It was so full of grammar and spelling mistakes the story was lost. I sent back very detailed corrections of the errors and the writer then had a proper editor edit. The final book was far better! So the point of this story is that grammar and spelling bother me! Swearing not at all unless it’s grammatically incorrect.

4
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Suzanne

Bad grammar!

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Cyndie

Grammar and spelling errors! They drive me crazy.

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Cheryl

Swearing doesn’t bother me in the least.

2
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Dee

Mispellings can be typos so its forgiveable but with bad grammar I’ll discontinue reading.

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Sylvia

probably the latter – the former totally ruins a book and means that it likely will not be finished, the latter simply means that I may get out a black pen and correct the mistakes – if it is really bad though it will not be finished either!

1
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Tina

Spelling errors! I should be a book editor! I do blame the ecitors for spelling mistakes. Poorly structured sentences and poor grammar and gramatical mistakes annoy me terribly as well because authors earn their living by writing and should know better. Lastly, repetitions; as an example, the Fifty Shades of Gray trilogy could have been condensed into one slim book if all the annoying repetitions were removed!

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Lisa-Marie

Excessive poor grammar & misspelled words always ruin a book for me! I read an arc recently & even though the story was good, the terrible grammar (& I mean truly horrendous) ruined it for me! I’m not bothered by swearing at all but, as I read mostly fantasy, I love it when authors are creative about swearing & come up with new swear words suitable for the world building!

0
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Sheila

All. Swearing especially blasphemy. Bad spelling. Bad grammar inconsistency

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Cindy

I could teach a sailor a few new words. Swearing has to be like, more frequent than every other word before it annoys me.

If the errors are unintentional, they should have caught those in editing; I may overlook just one, but if I see more, I have a good hard look at the publisher…

But ultimately, whatever it takes for the author to set up a scene well is fine with me. 😉

1
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Agnieszka

Grammar and spelling. Usually the editors are good at catching things. But mistakes happen

2
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Robin

swearing

0
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Neptune

Excessive misspelled words and bad grammar

4
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Terry

Misspelling and grammar

3
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Annalie

Bad grammar!

2
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Amanda

Excessive misspelled words and bad grammar! That drives me crazy!

2
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Agnieszka

To be fair sometimes misspelling is done on purpose though.

0
Amanda

That is true. But, to me, if it’s done too much, it can get a little tedious.

1
Emma

Swearing

3
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Sara

Misspelling. If the book is done right, the swearing doesn’t bother me.

4
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Cheryl

Actually, I think repetition bothers me more than anything. (Which explains why I’m super obsessed with catching it in my own work.) There are lots of ways to say a thing. No need to use the same word or phrase repeatedly.

5
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Zhang

Agreed, especially when a story line is repeated throughout a series.

2
Ratan

Swearing

1
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Tapu

Misspelling. It makes me angry.

2
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Anne

Excessive mistakes in spelling and grammar are signs of a rank amateur. If they won’t take the time or effort to “polish” their work, I won’t take the time or effort to read what they have written.

1
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Paula

Excessive swearing. Bad enough to hear without reading it too

0
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Vicki

definitely poor editing

1
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Amy

Wrong spellings or grammatical errors

1
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